While Michael Cohen cooperates with Mueller probe, Paul Manafort appears to be betting on a presidential pardon

Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and former
campaign chairman Paul Manafort have both been charged in
special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian
interference in the 2016 election.

While Cohen has cooperated extensively with
investigators, Manafort is playing into Trump's fixation with
loyalty and angling for a presidential pardon.

Legal experts say that given the magnitude of Cohen's
cooperation and the risks of a presidential pardon, Cohen's
strategy is likely to net him the least amount of jail time -
but nothing is set in Stone.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference
in the 2016 election has unfolded like an organized crime
investigation - flipping lower-level witnesses up the chain to
get to those at the top.

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Two of the top people ensnared in Mueller's crosshairs, Michael
Cohen and Paul Manafort, have adopted markedly different legal
strategies, with Cohen choosing to cooperate with law enforcement
and Manafort seemingly holding out for a pardon.

Cohen - President Donald Trump's long-time personal lawyer and
fixer of over a decade - has opted to cooperate with federal law
enforcement at every turn. Last week, he pleaded guilty on one count of
lying to Congress, a crime that usually merits a sentence of
around six months in jail, as part of a plea deal to cooperate
with Mueller's investigation.

"The Cohen strategy appears to look beyond the odds of winning or
losing," Alexander
Stern, a practicing attorney in California who publishes
legal scholarship on the Trump
administration, told INSIDER on Thursday.

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"Cohen knows that prosecutors are happy to agree with light
sentencing recommendations for defendants who are also government
witnesses...in exchange for major assistance prosecuting someone
higher up on the totem pole."

In August, Cohen also pleaded guilty in the Southern
District of New York to eight federal crimes, including tax
fraud, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations that he said
he carried out at Trump's behest. Cohen could have faced up
to 65 years of prison, if he had gone to trial and had been
convicted. Under the plea agreement, Cohen will likely serve
three to five years.

While his August guilty plea did not include an explicit
cooperation agreement, Cohen has given 70 hours of testimony to
the special counsel's office alone, has met with federal
prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and state
investigators in New York, and has also cooperated with a
separate unknown "open inquiry" conducted by the New York
Attorney General's office.

"Federal prosecutors at this level do not waste 70 hours of their
time if the witness is not very useful," Stern said. "Every day
that they spent interviewing Cohen they reassessed whether he
continued to be more helpful, and they found at least 70 hours of
value in him."

Manafort was also charged with multiple serious crimes relating
to his decades of work lobbying for a pro-Russian Ukrainian
political party in the US - but chose to hedge his bets in the
courts rather than cooperate.

Manafort was first charged in December 2017 in the District of
Columbia on 12 counts of crimes including money laundering and
failing to register as a foreign agent, and he and his deputy
Rick Gates were charged again in the Eastern District of Virginia
on 18 counts of tax and bank fraud.

While Gates chose to take a plea deal and testify against his
former mentor, Manafort went to trial. In August, he was convicted on eight
counts, with a mistrial declared on the other ten after
jurors could not come to a consensus.

While he opted to take a plea deal with the
special counsel's office ahead of his second trial scheduled
for December, a November court filing from Mueller's office
accused Manafort of breaching his plea agreement and lying to the
special counsel's office and the FBI. A memo from the special
counsel's office, expected to be filed Friday, may reveal more
details as to how Manafort violated his agreement.

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Rudy Giuliani, Trump's lead attorney, said he's advised President Donald Trump to hold off on pardoning Paul Manafort.

source

Carolyn Kaster/AP

Now, Manafort's only hope to avoid spending the rest of his life
in prison is a presidential pardon - something Trump has
frequently dangled before him, telling reporters he believed
Manafort's treatment was "unfair" and calling him "brave" for not
flipping.

"Manafort's strategy boils down to putting everything on black in
roulette," Stern said. "If everything goes right for him, he gets
a full pardon and goes home. Cohen is himself asking for a
sentence without jail time."

In a recent interview with the New York Post, Trump said a possible Manafort
pardon "was never discussed, but I wouldn't take it off the
table. Why would I take it off the table?"

"Trump has introduced a massive variable that almost no defense
attorney will know how to reliably assess: a pardon," said Stern.
"No lawyer is trained on how to assess the likelihood that this
particular president will actually follow through with any
suggestions of a pardon."

On Twitter and in public, Trump has slammed people like Cohen for
cooperating with Mueller and said "flipping" in criminal cases
should be outlawed while bemoaning the charges against Manafort
as a"hoax" and praising other non-cooperators like informal
campaign adviser Roger Stone - statements that some legal experts
warned came dangerously close to witness
tampering.

"At the end of the day, Cohen may serve a relatively small amount
of time and have a felony record forever," Stern predicted.
"Manafort will probably serve much more time unless Trump pardons
him, in which case he could get the better deal."

While the President's pardon powers are virtually unlimited when
it comes to federal crimes, Stern warned such a move could prove
legally risky for Trump. If Trump pardoned Manafort in an effort
"to get evidence against him or his family buried," it could be
construed as criminal obstruction of
justice.

"I favor Cohen's approach and think it will net him the most
legal benefit," Stern concluded. "However, Trump is nothing if
not surprising. Anything could happen."